The present invention is directed toward a portable compact microscope for use in examining fiber optic cables.
With the advent of fiber optic cables and, particularly, with their useage in the field of communication, it has become increasingly evident that some means of checking the quality of each fiber optic cable is needed at the point of installation where service personnel will be cutting, polishing and joining the cables, as well as at the point of manufacture.
Up until the present time, it has been the practice of those doing such inspections to employ, for instance, a conventional microscope which has been altered to hold the end of a fiber optic cable. These altered microscopes include no lighting provisions, requiring the service personnel to illuminate the cable with auxiliary lighting. Service personnel who quite often must operate in environmental and lighting conditions which are less than ideal, find the altered microscopes cumbersome and difficult to handle.
An example of a portable microscope which features a self-contained light source may be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 4,361,377 which issued Nov. 30, 1982 to Joel F. Pullen. The subject of this invention is a portable microscope which may be used for examining slides in a medical examination room setting.